Career-ended.

I’ve been receiving an email from my own email address, several times a day, offering me a job as a MYSTERY SHOPPER. Each email purports to be from a man named Michael McDowell in Seattle, Washington. Each separate email has included a different salary possibility–$650/wk, $700/wk, $950/wk–and all I have to do to get started is send them a bunch of information to a Gmail account comprised of random character strings (at) gmail (dot) com. Each of these character strings has been different, as well.

Another fake, obviously, not even as clever or well-organized as the last one. If it weren’t so amiable and persistent I might laugh.

I don’t laugh. I can’t laugh. All I have is rage. Each successive scam email breaks the back of another camel, each imaginary job offer just reminds me of the actual jobs who won’t even call me in to interview.

It’s gone beyond that. I think about the person who wrote this, on August 20th, the day I was laid off…

As your mind slowly begins to wrap itself around the idea that this is an opportunity, you resolve to find a job that you care about when you apply for it, instead of a job you have to force yourself to care about until you can no longer keep up the facade.

…and I don’t know who this person is. I find him simple, naive, I can’t imagine him older than nine. A pitiable thing, still declaring that the good guys always win and that love conquers all, that if you jump the net will appear. I despise this child and I despise him even more for being me.

I am at the boundaries of my bitterness today, wearing wind-beaten leather and a craggy countenance, chuckling obscenely at the storm clouds rolling in, inviting the thunder to flay the meat from my bones. All the positive outlook of the world passes through the cold wet machine of my mind and becomes fuel for envy, slides down my throat as sour salt metal. Every misspelled word in professional publication makes me shatter glass in my hands, every egregious public error fills my eyes with boiled blood. Today I am a small, petty version of the myself I wish to be. Today I am hateful and vile and whatever pleasantry you extract from me is skimmed off the surface of my mask, and I am both sorry and not sorry for this.

Today I want whatever beast toys with me to just tear off my limbs and be done with it.